


icarus, point to the sun

by daemons



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, More In Notes, Time Travel, non linear timeline because I love to be a confusing human, self sacrificing idiots in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:01:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21809947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daemons/pseuds/daemons
Summary: After a mission gone wrong, Hal Jordan finds himself jumping uncontrollably through the timeline. More specifically: through Bruce Wayne's timeline. But time is a dangerously fragile thing, and Hal is quickly running out of it.ora Time-Traveller's Wife AU
Relationships: Hal Jordan/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 11
Kudos: 151





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, first foray into the fandom, and i'm stuck on these idiots. 
> 
> this is LOOSELY based on the Time Traveller's Wife, in that one character travels through the other's timeline of their life. There is absolutely NO underage in this. Hal interacts with Bruce as a minor multiple times throughout the plan for this story, so if the the romantic pairing when Bruce is an adult is uncomfy, then please hit that back button xx
> 
> This will be updated as I write it, so hopefully fast, and the whole thing is planned out. 
> 
> title is from "john, my beloved" by sufjan stevens. 
> 
> Also unbeta-ed because I am a lone wolf

_I am singing now while Rome  
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,  
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.  
We are all going forward. None of us are going back._

_-Snow and Dirty Rain, Richard Siken._

-

_**Moments before the End**_

-

The second last thing Hal remembers is the shattering of his bones, the tearing of his atoms, the breath stolen from his lungs and thrown into the abyss of the vacuum above him. The chair, the Mobius chair, once so feared and deadly, is scattered around him in pulses of blue electric sparks. It twines with the green light that radiates from his body, from his ring, from everything that makes him alive. It curls up his arms and burrows into his ribcage, throttles at his heart like a vice. Any pain from the battle, his injuries, is a distant thought. 

Metron is dead. Hal can’t see him, but he knows. He can feel it in the emptiness, the cut off scream as the villain is torn to shreds and disintegrated, and Hal wonders if it’s the ring on his hand that’s keeping him from the same fate. Hal can’t see anything outside of the vortex of green and blue, spinning and vibrating around him like a tornado. 

The last thing Hal remembers is someone, somewhere, calling his name in sheer desperation. A broken call, sharp and torn. And then he’s gone.

The stars are silent, and the green disappears. 

-

_**1985**_

-

It was a warm sunny day, a rare sight in Gotham, when a bleeding man stumbled into Thomas Wayne’s garden, collapsing right on top of the marigolds. 

Having an injured man pass out almost directly at his feet was, in fact, a common occurrence in Thomas’ day to day life. What was not common, however, was the appearance of any injured men at his house. Most injuries and chaos surrounding said injuries were primarily confined to Gotham General, where Thomas spent most of his days. Gotham was a city with widespread and uncontrollable violence, and Gotham General was at it’s ripe, unfettered centre. If the emergency room wasn’t swarming at all hours with the bloody tragedies of a rotting city, then it wouldn’t be a day in Gotham. 

Thomas loved his city. It was a city where generations of the Wayne name stood firm, a city where the blood of his ancestral line soaked the dirt at the family cemetery. The Wayne family only knew Gotham, and Gotham only knew the Waynes. Thomas had been born in this city, his son had been born in this city, and if Thomas made it even the slightest bit better with nothing but a scalpel and a funnel of old money to the people and out of the hands of the corrupt, well then, he would do what he needed to do. He was a doctor, after all, and one of the best in the state. He would heal his city, one broken person at a time. 

But those broken people tended to be confined to the white and sterile rooms of Gotham General. Those broken people didn’t tend to trip into Thomas’ front garden, bleeding all over the flowers. 

Thomas had been outside by pure coincidence, taking in the warm sun upon his face, while Martha lounged upon the chaise on the terrace with an old book in hand. Somewhere, he heard his son’s peals of laughter as he ran through the open backdoor, Martha calling after him _Bruce, darling, be careful!_ , and the smell of baking bread through the kitchen’s open windows where Alfred hummed to himself. It was a good day, a peaceful day, the kind of day Thomas treasured immensely, the kind he carved in stone into his memory and stored away to never be forgotten. Thomas watched his wife, and listened to his son, and smiled to himself: content. 

Then, like a trick of the light, like a ghost flitting at the edge of his peripheral, there was a flash of color, a change in the wind, a prickle of energy that crawled up Thomas’ arms, and then the sound of feet crunching over the gravel leading up to the Manor. 

Thomas stared at the man, and the man stared back. 

He was a tall fellow, with strong shoulders and long legs. His face was covered with dark ash, smears of blood and lines of sweat cutting through the grey dust. Blood matted brown hair, and a bright green ring rested firmly on his right hand that was pressed to his side. Thomas tracked his eyes down to the blood seeping between the man’s fingers, slow pumps of dark crimson. A soft green glow, which Thomas argued later _had_ to be a trick of the light, faded slowly away from the man.

For the longest moment, neither of them moved. Thomas, in a terribly uncharacteristic moment of shock, was frozen in place, his brain cycling at high speeds to comprehend the sight in front of him. The man just looked at him, eyes wide and glassy with confusion and pain, gaze flitting between Thomas and the Manor that loomed behind him.

The man took a step forward, a shaky movement, before his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed forward like a marionette with his strings cut. 

Only then did the doctor part of Thomas’ brain wake up, pounding furiously at the front door, and he sprung into action. He called quickly and loudly for Alfred, thankful for the now open windows.

“Sir, what on earth is the-- oh my goodness,” the Englishman said, gaping in horror at the scene before him as he hurried to the front door. 

“Alfred, quick, I need your help moving him,” Thomas said, landing on his knees with a thud next to the unconscious man currently slumped over crushed magnolias. 

Thomas quickly rolled the man over onto his back, careful of the gash near his ribs, and with Alfred’s help, they deadlifted the man and shuffled him into the Manor. Martha had come running from the porch at the sound of commotion, and gasped at the scene.

“Thomas, who--” she started, and cut off as Bruce appeared next to her side. She held him back with one hand as the two men moved past her to the study where Thomas kept his medical kit.

“Call an ambulance,” Thomas commanded, voice harsher than he intended, like he was ordering one of his residents at the hospital. Martha, to her credit, said nothing except a nod as she dashed towards the phone-line in the kitchen. 

The strange man started to regain consciousness upon the makeshift examination table which was actually just a drawing table in Thomas’ study, around the time Thomas had started to shine a small penlight into the man’s eyes to determine whether a concussion was present. Alfred, with all the years of army training behind him, was studiously cleaning the man’s open wound of garden dirt and god knows what else with boiling water and a steady hand. Thomas had never been so grateful for the man’s unshakable demeanor. Drop a strange, dying man in his lap, and Alfred Pennyworth was still absolutely unflappable. 

“Can you hear me?” Thomas asked, clicking the penlight off and holding his fingers against the man’s pulse point in his neck. The pulse was quick, but steady, “My name is Doctor Thomas Wayne, and you are in my home, but an ambulance is on its way.”

The man groaned, brow furrowing as he stared up at Thomas, “Wha-”

“You have a wound along your ribcage, along with numerous other injuries that I cannot ascertain at the moment. Do you know where you are?”

The man’s eyes widened slightly, then, “No. I--”

He tried to move, whether by reflex or in an attempt to get away from Thomas and Alfred, but it jostled his injuries and his eyes rolled again, showing all white underneath his eyelids. Thomas swore, and moved to the injured side.

“The bleeding won’t slow, sir,” Alfred said, and stepped aside to let Thomas hold gauze over the wound, “It’s a nasty wound.”

“Any idea what might’ve caused it?”

“Haven’t the faintest clue. Any clue who this man is?”

Thomas pressed the gauze tighter, noting the blood that quite quickly stained through. If the ambulance didn’t arrive soon, Thomas was resigned to stitching up the wound himself. 

“No idea,” Thomas said, “Never seen him before in my life.”

“How strange,” Alfred mused, wringing a bloodied rag into a pink-stained water bowl, “He’s a military man.”

“How-”

“His jacket, sir. Air Force pilot, by the looks of that insignia. Warfare specialization, to be precise.”

Thomas had, admittedly, been incredibly distracted by the blood to notice the man’s outfit. But sure enough, the khaki green and stitched US flag was unmistakably. As was the name patch across the man’s chest, in block letters, _Jordan_. 

“Could have stolen the jacket,” Thomas said quietly.

Alfred hummed, “Sad state of affairs, if that is the case, sir. It does not answer the question of why he was at the manor in the first place.”

“No,” Thomas said, swapping the gauze for a fresh wrap from his kit, and reaching for his suturing equipment, “But he’s still a patient, and he needs my help.”

“Dad?”

Bruce’s voice was small and inquisitive, and Alfred made a tutting noise as he reached for the child.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred admonished, “You shouldn’t be here.”

Thomas looked up from his work at his son, who had wandered into the study. Bruce was so small, his head barely reaching the top of the table, and his pale eyes studied the unconscious pilot with a child's curiosity. 

“Who is he?” Bruce asked, his voice soft, “Is he okay?” 

“I don’t know,” Thomas said, “But he’s hurt, Bruce.”

“Oh,” Bruce said, and gently reached a small hand to tap the top of the man’s, “Will you fix him?”

Thomas sent a look at Alfred, who moved forward and gently pulled the five year old away from the patient. Bruce just stared at the man’s unconscious form.

“When the ambulance comes, we’ll take him to the hospital,” Thomas said, “And we’ll help him better there. I’m a doctor, Bruce. I’ll fix him.”

Bruce accepted this with the steadfast loyalty of a child, accepted his father’s words with a solemn nod of his small dark head. 

By the time the ambulance arrived, wheeling a gurney through the halls, Thomas had stitched the wound as best he could with the limited supplies he had, finally staunching the blood. The man drifted in and out of consciousness, hands flexing into fists on the table. The stitches were quick work, and as the blood flow started to slow, it was clear there was significant internal bleeding underneath the man’s skin.

“Gods,” Thomas said quietly, “What happened to you?”

The man didn’t answer.

-

At the hospital, after a proper examination, Thomas deduced that the strange man did not need surgery or drastic measures. The stitches held, and they hooked him up to an IV and a blood bag to replenish the sheer amount of blood loss he had suffered, and kept a vigilant eye on the internal injuries. A few ribs were cracked, and quickly wrapped, but other than a fair amount of nasty bruises, the man would make a full recovery.

It still didn’t explain any of Thomas’ more pressing questions. Had the man been in a car accident of some kind, and found himself wandering to the Manor for help? It was Thomas’ best theory, but there was a nagging thought at the back of his mind: that the man had appeared out of simply _nowhere_. One minute, the driveway had been completely clear for as far as the eye could see, then, a flash of light, and the injured pilot- supposedly- had staggered into Thomas’ eyesight. 

Completely bizarre. 

It was only just over an hour when the man stirred again, hooked up to the hospital bed. His clothes had been cleaned down as best they could, but they still stood out stark and dirty against the white sheets. 

Thomas looked up from the patient charts he had been studying, glasses perched on his nose, at the sound of the pained groan from the bed.

“Easy,” he said, and the man blinked at him, “You’re at Gotham General. My name is Doctor Thomas Wayne. Don’t try to sit up just yet, you lost a lot of blood.”

There was another groan, then a sigh as the man tried to lift his head before letting it flop back down on the pillow. 

“Christ,” he moaned, his voice hoarse, “I’m where?”

He was fairly coherent, which surprised Thomas, and he stood up to take note of the man’s pulse and shine a light into his eyes.

“Gotham General,” Thomas said, and sat back down when there was no sign of concussion or arrhythmia.

The man frowned, “Did you… did you say G--? Is there, uh, water--”

Thomas reached for a paper cup as the man coughed, and helped him drink the cool liquid for a moment. The man cleared his throat, and Thomas stepped away again.

“Sorry,” the man said, voice brighter, “Did you say, uh, Gotham?”

“Gotham General,” Thomas repeated, “It’s the closest hospital, and also my place of employment. You could not be in better hands.”

The man stared at him, “Gotham? Gotham City?”

“Yes.”

“I’m in Gotham City?”

Thomas frowned, wondering if maybe they had missed a head injury. He made a note to check for it once he got some answers, “That’s correct.”

The man whistled, “Shit. How?”

“How?”

“How did I get to, um, here? Gotham?”

Thomas sighed, and closed the patient charts, “Honestly, I was hoping you could tell me that. What do you remember?”

Something flashed across the man’s eyes, something Thomas couldn’t decipher, and his jaw clenched, “Not much.”

“Right, I will get you up to speed then. You appeared at my house, bleeding to death, before you collapsed into my garden. I do not know who you are, or what you were doing there, but I wasn’t about to let you bleed out on my driveway.”

The man frowned, “Your… house?”

“Yes. How did you arrive there?”

“I,” the man started, then paused, “I don’t know.”

There was a beat, a moment of silence, and Thomas sighed, “I see. That makes two of us. What is your name?”

The man was quiet, then, “Hal. Hal Jordan.”

Well, Thomas noted, at least that matched up with the name across his jacket. 

“Well, I would say ‘nice to meet you’, Mr Jordan, but I’m afraid there could be better circumstances in which we meet.”

There was silence, except for the soft and rhythmic beeping of the monitors. 

“Who are you, again?” the man- Jordan- asked, after an uncomfortable pause. 

“Doctor Thomas Wayne.”

Jordan gaped at him, “Wayne? Thomas… Wayne?”

Thomas laughed humorlessly, “The one and only.”

“I…. you’ve got to be kidding.”

That was new. Thomas looked at Jordan, and pursed his lips, “Not at all. Do you know who I am?”

Jordan’s eyes widened, then a pause, then a slow, “Yes. I think.”

“You think?”

Jordan sat up, slowly, and groaned at the exertion, “Maybe it’s the painkillers or adrenaline talking, but I think you’re the father of a… friend… of mine.”

Thomas frowned, “That’s impossible.”

“Yep, that’s what I thought too. You’re d--”

Thomas waved away whatever the man was saying with a flick of his hand, “Impossible because my only son and child is five years old. You must have me confused with someone else. It’s quite possible you are delirious. Do you know how you got injured?”

Jordan was quiet, and Thomas looked up at him to see a strange expression on his face.

“Your son is… five?”

“Correct. You met him, briefly, but you were unconscious for most of it. He was concerned for your health.”

“Your son?”

“Yes. His name is Bruce. Good kid.”

Jordan made a strangled noise, like someone choking, and when Thomas frowned at him, the man ignored him. In fact, the pilot was staring at the ceiling like it held the secrets to the universe, and his fists were clenched.

“This isn’t funny,” he hissed, “This is… what the fuck. I don’t. I don’t know what’s going on. Where am I?”

Thomas stood up, sighing, “Mr Jordan, I’m going to have you sent to have some more scans, to see if there is any brain injury. Anything you can tell me about your accident, how you came to be at my house, anything you may know, will help us immensely.”

Jordan just kept staring at the ceiling, eyes unseeing, and Thomas sighed once more, before leaving the room. 

“Keep an eye on Mr Jordan’s fluids,” he commanded a nurse behind the nearest desk, “I’ll book him in for a few scans, see if there is any swelling on the brain. Other than that, see if he remains coherent and inform me _immediately_ if he doesn’t. I need coffee.”

So Thomas sat in his office, lamenting the loss of his day, and tried to put the strange incident from his mind. It proved a difficult task- the image of the bleeding man stumbling out of nowhere, appearing from thin air-- but no, that was impossible. That was--

“Doctor Wayne?” 

Thomas looked up at his door, a nurse hovering nervously, “Yes?”

“The police are here to question your patient. But there’s a problem. I, um...”

“What is it, Marie?”

“He’s not there.”

Thomas stilled, one hand halfway up to his face to adjust his glasses, “Sorry?”

“The patient. Mr Jordan? He’s not in his room.”

By the time Thomas had left his office and arrived at the room only a short walk away, brushing past the bored looking GCPD officer, he found it empty. The IV trailing on the bed, drops of blood, rumbled sheets, but no man. The window was shut, the door constantly monitored.

“Did you see him leave?” Thomas demanded, and the nurse shook her head.

“Uh, no, Doctor, but it’s busy along here. He could’ve slipped away, we wouldn’t have noticed.”

Thomas exhaled slowly, removing his glasses and pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

“Close the file,” he said finally, “The man clearly did not want to be here. It’s done.”

With that, Thomas decided he was going home. 

-

_**Thirty minutes Before the End** _ **or _A Brief but Important Flash-Forward_**

-

“This is a suicide mission.”

“Almost certainly.”

“Well, gee, Spooky, don’t sugar-coat it for me.”

Bruce turned to face him, his cowl pushed down, his jaw set, “There’s no point in false hope. There’s a good chance, an overwhelming chance, that we will die. To not face those facts… it’s dangerous.”

Hal sighed, “But we have no choice?”

“But we have no choice.”

The silence was taut, heavy, like a suffocation blanket. Hal felt goosebumps rise on his skin, at the hopelessness in Bruce’s eyes, the frustration. It terrified him. It made his chest constrict. He moved slowly, across the cockpit, and leaned on the wall next to Bruce. It didn’t make him feel any better.

“Well,” he said, “End of the world. End of the line.”

Bruce made a low sound in his throat. Hal pressed on.

“We got nothing left, no more plays. What do we do with the last moments we have as breathing creatures?”

Bruce looked at him, and Hal looked back, and shit, how had he never noticed how fucking gorgeous Bruce was before? How pale and haunting his eyes were? 

Something clicked, right behind Hal’s ribcage, like the final piece of the puzzle, and he thought, _Oh. So that’s what you were missing all along._ and he reached for Bruce.

What do you do with your last moments? Make-out with Batman against a spaceship wall.

Put that on Hal’s gravestone, please and thank you.

-

_**1996**_

-

The white of the hospital room ceiling disappeared, fading, and the feeling of his bones being pulled apart returned. The light enveloped him. The agony shook his entire body, unable to scream, or move, and then, as suddenly as it came on, it stopped. 

There was concrete under his fingertips, the hard press of it on his back. The rush of cold air into his lungs, the lance of pain up and down his body. He groaned, low, and focused on the feeling of smooth rock underneath him. His ring hummed through his head, a steady presence on his hand.

“Hello?”

Hal opened his eyes.

A dark haired teenager stood above him, peering down owlishly. He was pale, thin and lanky, dressed in a black school uniform. He looked wildly unimpressed with Hal’s current predicament.

His eyes were bright, a pale blue-grey. Piercing. Hal would recognize them anywhere.

“Bruce?” he asked, voice soft, disbelieving.

“Hal,” Bruce said, and his mouth pulled into a smile, “You’re back again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ story playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7KwzFHi3Otktuq5S9WqTcM?si=FByJYqL5Qb2bGhrB-fdpyQ)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [story playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7KwzFHi3Otktuq5S9WqTcM?si=8At1LxYsQG64XoYXmG3H7g)
> 
> we're establishing the angst and hopefully more explanations. more angst and more explanations to come!

-  
_**A Linear Stop-Over**_  
-

When Bruce Wayne is five years old, his father saves a strange man. Bruce can’t remember much of that day, or that man, only that he was a stranger and that he seemed, to Bruce, to glow green. His father never talked about it, because he was an important doctor and didn’t have time for childish questions, and his mother didn’t know much about the strange man either.

When Bruce is seven years old, he falls down an old mine-shaft and breaks his arm. His father saves him, then, like he did the strange man. 

_(He doesn’t save him from the bats.)_

When Bruce is eight years old, the strange man comes back and he _knows_ Bruce, knows Bruce very well, knows all sorts of things about Bruce and the future and everything in it because he is from the future. The man is kind, and gentle, and Bruce’s father had saved him, once, and then he saved Bruce, like he saves people every day. 

“I want to save people, too,” Bruce told the kind man, “Like my dad.”

And the man (Hal. He tells Bruce is name is _Hal._ ) looks sad, and he has that look on his face when adults know something, but they’re not allowed to say what it is. Bruce is eight, but he still doesn’t really understand grown-ups.

“You’ll save people,” the man says, very quietly, like a secret, “I promise.”

“Really?” Bruce asks.

“You save everyone,” the man says, “Everyone.”

Bruce thought about that, very carefully, and then asks, “Even you?”

Hal laughs, but it doesn’t sound right. It still sounds sad. 

“Even me, Bruce. Especially me.”

Before he leaves, Hal makes Bruce look at him and holds his chin in his hand.

“This is important,” he says, and he sounds so tired, “Bruce. Listen to me. Everything is going to be okay. I promise. Even when it seems like it isn’t. It’s going to be okay.”

He disappears before Bruce can ask him what he’s talking about. Adults are so confusing to Bruce, but Hal is definitely the most confusing one yet. At least the other adults don’t disappear.

Bruce is eight and his parents are murdered by a stranger in a dark alleyway. His father doesn’t save his mother, or himself, and they leave Bruce to sit in on that blood stained stone with his mother’s brains soaking through his shirt and his father’s hand growing cold in his, and no one saves him while he screams for his parents.

Bruce is eight and he decides that the future is a liar.

When Bruce Wayne is eleven years old, Hal Jordan comes back and Bruce throws a chair at him. 

_(Hal thinks, this is definitely more like his Bruce)_

-  
_**1996**_  
-

“Sorry, can you repeat that?”

The teenager that was definitely Bruce Wayne, but that’d be impossible because the Bruce Wayne Hal knew was definitely not a teenager, just rolled his eyes and downed a cup of coffee in one swallow.

“We have been through this before,” he said, wiping at his mouth, “At least four times, to be precise.”

“Uh, no.”

“No?”

Hal exhaled slowly, and tried to take stock of his surroundings. He had woken up on the floor of what appeared to be a dormitory room, with the clutter of textbooks and notepads, the discarded school uniforms, and even a lacrosse stick propped against the wall. He’d tried, upon first stumbling into the room after Bruce had helped him up off the pavement outside the dormitories, to do an environment scan with the ring. It had just hummed in the back of his mind in confusion, clearly as clueless as he was about wherever the fuck they were. The room was large, and split pretty evenly down the middle, with one side clearly lived in and the other side sparse and almost empty of any sign of life. 

“My roommate is out of the country,” Bruce explained at Hal’s curiosity, “A pilgrimage. It’s bullshit. So don’t worry.”

Hal looked at him shrewdly, “That’s not like you.”

“Not like me?”

“You being flippant of other people’s religions, or cultures. It’s not like you.”

Bruce scoffed, “Why do you care?”

“I’m Jewish.”

“And? So am I.”

Hal frowned, “You never mentioned that.”

“Well, not me, really. My parents were. But it didn’t do them much good, did it?”

Hal fell silent. He didn’t agree with Bruce, but his body still hurt from the healing injuries that seemed to get torn up every-time he… what? Time-travelled? Jumped? Whatever. He didn’t feel like arguing with a sixteen year old. 

“Where am I?” he said instead, “I’ve never been here before.”

“No, this is a first for you,” Bruce responded, fiddling with a kettle and coffee behind him, “You’re at Groton School.” 

“Right,” Hal said, “I meant, I haven’t been here. With you, before. But you act like I have.”

Bruce didn’t respond while he poured the water, the clinking of the stirring spoon the only noise, before he started drinking it as soon as he lifted the mug. Hal raised an eyebrow at the eagerness.

“I like coffee,” Bruce explained, “Alfred only ever gives me tea when I’m home, so.”

Hal snorted, “Of course baby you is a coffee fiend. Are you sure Tim isn’t related to you?”

“Who?”

Hal shook his head, “I. No one.”

Bruce sighed, “You always do that. You’ll talk about things from the future, people I don’t know yet. You never tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Bruce,” Hal said weakly, “I don’t know you. I--”

Bruce looked at him shrewdly, and it was so similar to Hal’s Bruce that it stole the air from his lungs. The teenager before him was a skinny thing, his hair unkempt, his face still holding pockets of puppy fat. His eyes were Bruce’s, no doubt, and there was a darkness to them, an anger in his entire frame. But an innocence, a hint of optimism and hope that was an utter stranger to his adult self. Hal recognized him so completely and yet, didn’t know him at all.

“I don’t know you,” Hal said, “I don’t know what’s going on, at all.”

Bruce frowned, “You don’t?”

“I-- I think I’m going insane.”

Hal remembered the Mobius chair exploding, catching him in his radius, the blue lightning that fought so hard against his green constructs and enveloped him in fire. 

“You’re not insane,” Bruce said, matter-of-factly.

“So I’m dead, then?”

Bruce sighed, and sat down opposite Hal. They stared at each other across the carpeted floor, in that cold dormitory room, and the silence hung in the air. Bruce pulled something out from behind him, and slid it across the floor to Hal. 

“I’ve met you four times,” Bruce said, his voice quiet and very young, “My father saved you when I was five years old. Eleven years ago.”

Hal gently picked up the notebook Bruce gave him. The symbol on the front was familiar, and he traced it with his fingers, “I was just there. With your father. Just before you found me.”

“You said this would happen. It’s in that book.”

Hal opened the notebook, and recognized his own scribble on some of the pages, “I gave you this? What… what is this?”

“Dates. Meetings. You gave it to me when I was eleven, but you didn’t recognize it on your last visit.”

“Which was?”

“Two years ago.”

Hal scanned the pages, quickly. The numbers, dates, were gibberish to him. None of it made sense. He flipped a few pages forward, and, with a start, recognized Bruce’s handwriting. He’d seen it on enough League reports in his time. 

_I’m going to find a cure. It’s all to do with the chair. This is the main reality._

“Did you write this?” Hal asked. Bruce peered over the top of his hand to look.

“No,” he answered, “I don’t know what it means. You didn’t tell me.”

Hal kept reading.

 _Don’t forget your reality, Hal._ Bruce had written.

Then, on the next page, Hal saw his own handwriting. The page was stained with something, dark droplets that had dried between the lines. The writing was messy, as if written in a hurry.

_Bruce is the answer_

“So,” Hal tried to say, but his voice was shaky. He cleared his throat, “So, we’ve met before. And I can’t remember?”

“Maybe. You just said it hadn’t happened yet, for you.”

Hal stared at the book, his hands shaking. None of this made sense. He was dead. He was insane. This was his dying, insane, brain’s last hurrah before it completely shut down. This was his last moments before evisceration. He exhaled, slowly. It didn’t help.

“You ok?” 

Hal looked up, and Bruce was staring at him with unfiltered concern in his eyes. It made Hal laugh, and he did, hysterical laughing that tore at his injured side, and he gasped through the pain. 

“What?” Bruce said, reaching for him. 

“It’s just,” Hal gasped, and clawed at his side, “You hate me. You fucking hate me.”

Bruce pulled at him, pushing at his jacket and tugging at his blood-stained shirt until his side was exposed. The stitches had remained, but the wound was weeping blood down Hal’s skin, inflamed and raw. Hal flexed his hand, his ring humming, and the green light did a quick scan of his side. There was no infection, luckily. Bruce’s hand hovered over the sound, not touching, and Hal looked at his face. It was stricken.

“You said,” Bruce said, so quietly, “That you were with my father. Did he. Is this what I remember? Him fixing you?”

Hal laughed weakly, his side flaring in agony, “He didn’t fix me, kid. People don’t get fixed. He helped.”

“But this is… he did this? Stitched you?”

“Yeah.”

Bruce pulled back, staring at the stitches, his face open and distressed. Hal pulled his shirt back down, and the damp material stuck to the wound uncomfortably. He looked a right mess. Like death warmed up. Bruce sat there, legs crossed, eyes very far away. 

“Hey,” Hal said, and Bruce looked up. God, he was so young. It was unnerving. Hal wondered if this is what Damian would look like as a teenager, “Did I tell you what the notebook is? On my last visit?”

“The notebook?”

“The symbol on the front of it.”

Bruce glanced down at it, “It’s an S.”

Hal laughed again, “Oh man. I’m gonna remember that one. It means hope. Honestly, I don’t know the rules here, because I’m still convinced this is hell or something, but I probably shouldn’t have given you that particular notebook. But the symbol, on the front. It’s the last name of a friend of ours. Well, more your friend. I don’t think he likes me much, to be honest.”

“My friend’s last name is an S?”

“Nah, his last name is El.”

Bruce stared at the notebook, “Why is his last name on a notebook?”

Hal decided not to answer that, and looked down at this blood-stained t-shirt, “I think. I think I’m fucked here.”

“Oh,” Bruce said, and stood up. He walked over to an overflowing suitcase that had been thrown half-hazardly on the bed, rifling through it for a moment, before pulling a black shirt from it’s depths, “Here.”

He tossed it to Hal, who caught it and stared at it suspiciously, “What’s this?”

“A shirt? So you’re not wearing a dirty one?”

“It’s my size.”

Bruce nodded, “Yes.”

“How do you have my size in clothes?”

“We went clothes shopping last time you were here.”

“Wait,” Hal said, clutching at the shirt, “Did I get Pretty Woman-ed by a teenager?”

“Sure. Or it’s just a shirt, because you knew that you’d need it.”

That made sense. Hal changed shirts quickly, hissing through his teeth as the movement pulled at his stitches, and incinerated the white shirt with a quick construct. Bruce just watched, unfazed.

“You’ve seen me use the ring before, then?” Hal asked. Bruce nodded, “That seems against the rules.”

“What rules?”

“Rules of time-travel, or something?”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

Hal stopped, and tipped his head back against the wall, “I. I don’t know.”

Bruce moved again, this time sitting next to Hal, “If it makes you feel better. I’m trying to figure it out.”

“What out?”

“You. I’m still convinced you’re an overgrown imaginary friend.”

“Wait,” Hal said, “You think _you’re_ insane?”

Bruce looked solemn, “Yes. You’re a figment of my imagination, I presume. Except that my father saw you too. There’s no other explanation for why you keep appearing.”

“Bruce,” Hal said. His voice felt faint, his body exhausted, and he slumped against the wall, “You’re not insane, kid. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not that. Crazy, sure, but not insane.”

“So why me?”

Something pulled, deep in Hal’s chest, and he winced. Bruce’s eyes were wide, waiting for an answer. For the first time in Hal’s existence, Batman was looking at him for an answer.

And he didn’t have the faintest clue.

“I don’t know, kid,” Hal said, “But I’m fucking terrified.”

Bruce reached for him as Hal faded away, the fire racing up his veins again.

-

_**The Stricken Present** _

-

“Bruce.”

Bruce ignores the sound of footsteps as they enter the gym, and he ignores the sound of Clark’s voice as it echoes through the room. He continues punching the heavy bag, one two, one two, and ignores the burning pain across his knuckles and the copper smell of blood on the air.

His head hurts.

“Bruce. Stop.”

He keeps punching, and there’s the slightest flash of wind next to him, and then Clark has grasped his fists in his own hands. Bruce stares down at them. Clark’s hands are pale, unscarred. Bruce’s hands are bleeding, knuckles split, the red spilling down over scars that litter the exposed skin. They’re old marks.

“I couldn’t save him,” Bruce says, finally, the words pulled from him. They’re words he’d never say to anyone but Clark. Clark is. Clark is different, “He was there, and I was there, and I couldn’t get to him in time.”

It’s like Ethiopia. The crowbar, the blast, Jason’s limp body. And then the flash of bright blue, bright green, and then Hal was---

He is never, ever, fast enough. Batman isn’t fast enough. 

“Bruce.” Clark’s voice is sad. 

Clark. Kal-El. El. 

El means hope. 

The bright red and blue symbol is right in Bruce’s vision, a symbol of hope and strength and Bruce just stares because. 

_It means hope._

Hal’s voice is quiet, but unmistakable. 

Pain shoots through Bruce’s head, whiting out his vision, and it’s only Clark’s strong hands on his arms that keep him from crumbling to the ground.

“Jesus, Bruce! Bruce, are you--”

Bruce doesn’t hear him.

The room splits with bright green light.

-  
_**2009**_  
-

This time, Hal fell.

Teenage Bruce’s wide eyes disappeared, the Groton dormitory fading from view, and then Hal could see the dank stone walls of a cave, and nothing beneath him, and then he dropped.

He hit the ground with a painful thud, every injury on his battered body lit up like a particularly sadistic Christmas tree, and he yelled in agony as his side ripped open and his fractured ribs screamed their displeasure. His head knocked against the cold ground, making stars flash behind his eyelids.

There was a sound of something scraping, someone yelling, the sound of pounding footsteps, and then strong warm hands on his face. Hal looked up, his vision tinged with red.

Bruce’s face swam in front of his. His wide shoulders, his handsome jaw, his short-cropped hair that still curled over his forehead. His pale eyes, looking down at Hal with muted concern. The darkness that lurked behind them. His thumb stroked over Hal’s forehead.

“Oh good,” Hal said, “You’re an adult this time.”

And then he passed out.


End file.
